EP 3 - A Blueprint for Morning Prayer
00:00 No, no, peace, domine, domine. No, no, peace, domine. Se domini, se domini, trua da rolinna.
00:28 In the 1960s, the parish priest asked me to run the youth club. I said, Father, look, I've tried this impossible.
00:40 Or with goddess of parish hall, there's no atmosphere whatsoever. He said, well, use the old derelict house in the parish precinct.
00:49 So we did. di ′….and then we made it … great opportunity ahagwamisfire us so that a nightclub …anda, wow, it went well!
00:58 … group from all over London wanted to play there! In fact, he might have heard of Deep Purple. They were formed there – or, if not actually, formed there.
01:08 They came to listen to a group called Episode Six and they said like the same singer that they had all Era》 dov of cooked and to wear and found last smell of a prayer, how it seem!
01:20 ,and visit him for two-yon Sunday. …so, I did, a two-yon Sunday! …he said, I believe you are wonderful with young people.
01:34 You are a great, great leader! I tried to look as humbours I could, but I would! ,I might have been great with young people, but it was they who were leading me, more than I was leading them.
01:49 The truth of the matter was I'd somehow missed out on my adolescence and I was reliving it with them led by them in my 20s.
02:00 I loved it, it was wonderful. I owe the silver lining. Jeff Beck's greater chart-topper was the anthem for the club and the signature tune to my life.
02:12 I was having a ball. …and then the bishop said, I'm afraid, I want you to leave the club, I thought, oh, what have I done, what have I done, who's been complaining, there were no complaints, …is that I want you to become the director of my diocesan retreat and conference centre, and I'm going to send
02:36 young people to you every week from the schools, …and I would like you to give them retreats. My my father, I was a half, I was shattered, that I had to leave the club but to be given a flashlight of my own in the diocesan retreat centre, my own boss, my own car, and given a, a, a freedom to do what
03:04 I wanted it was wonderful. ― ― ― ― ― . . . . God in you, but when they meet you, they meet God in some way in you.
04:21 I knew it was back to prayer again, the prayer life that had been slipping, that had been seduced thanks to the swinging sixties, because if I was going to talk to them about prayer, I couldn't do it as a hypocrite.
04:34 And so I started again, and I began to give it another go. If I could only, if they could only go away with the basis of a prayer life, mourning a night press, if just that then something would be achieved.
04:55 And so what I did I churched the Lord's Prayer and I took the first two words Father аюсь Guessy asall纖報 sorre To begin with, I took the letter O Ja O standing for morning offering I spoke enough about that last time and I told him how I'd been taught to use the morning offering By my mother but there
05:25 was something else had happened later in my life a me in my own mourning offering, at least in putting into practice in my daily life.
05:37 When my father died and my father never really spoke to me about the spiritual life at all, though I knew he read a lot about the fathers of the church, particularly the desert fathers.
05:48 and I found in the back of his missile these words, this short little prayer, oh God come to my aid, oh Lord, make haste to help me.
06:07 He taken these words from the writings of John Cassian. Now John Cassian as you may or may not know, spent about 12 years in the desert before founding his own monastery of St.
06:20 Victor in Marseille, where he then wrote down all his findings, all that he'd learned from the desert fathers to hand on to others.
06:30 And this was one of the prayers that he handed on. It was been given, or the prayer was given by Abbott Isaac to his disciples, and they were taught to use it recurrently throughout the day.
06:44 so as to reinforce their mourning offering and call God to help them when they were in danger of forgetting what they were about.
06:58 St. Benedict used this prayer to begin his divine office at midnight and recurrently throughout the rest of the day, oh God come to my aid, oh Lord, mea keis to help me.
07:11 A nai hausins found this very helpful, to have a short prayer that you can use throughout the day to remind you of your morning offering that you made at the beginning of the day.
07:25 So, I merely mentioned it because it might be of help to you. And if you don't find this particular prayer helpful, mate one of your own, seek one out in the Psalms, a mass in the liturgy or whatsoever, to keep you on course, offering the whole of your day to God.
07:47 I used the next letter, the letter U, to remind them that the moment they began to pray Pain sitting sat on the throne they once were, gloriously All praise at and Him, the great liturgists that Email the general, Youngman who I've referred to before, Maksilus that this Christ never braves alone, craves
08:16 never braves alone, whenever He braves He has His church with him, all who are inside Him bound together by the Holy Spirit.
08:26 Meditāra, thin in the last ten years that I've been working on studying the early church and writing about it last 20 years to be more precise.
08:40 As I've been doing this, I've actually been praying to the apostles, to the fathers, to the Church, to the martyrs, a poem about whom I'm writing asking them to help me ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― me to write about it, for others.
09:05 My mother also told me, at this particular point in my prayer life, also that my prayer was multi-dimensional. It could reach out from where I am now to the four corners of the world, to the past, to the future, but also into the next life, and particularly she reminded me therefore to pray for the Holy
09:30 souls. I explained before how it's impossible for us to be united with God before being united with Christ, and for that a purification has to take place.
09:42 If not completed in this life, then it is completed in the next life in purgatory, to pray for the Holy Soul, she said, including our own grandparents, friends, relatives, while languishing there, or in the process of being purified before being united with Christ and through him with the Father.
10:08 In fact, when I was a boy, I used to pray to them as well. Pray to them to wait near in the morning when I had to get up early and you know I was never let down, never let down.
10:20 Meningersleitu when my mother was visiting us, visiting me, she was leaving my room and on the way out she pointed to my the table next to my bedside table.
10:32 And she said, what's that? I said, oh, that's an alarm clock to wake and be up in the mornings. ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― � ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― am just praying for my father, for a happy death for my father.
11:35 Your father said the lay brother, but he died three years ago. Yes, I know. The prayer in Christ has no boundaries.
11:53 ,can reach out to the past, to the future, and even into the next life. At the time when I was trying to explain this to the children in the diocesan center, a story broke of a young doctor, her name was Dr.
12:15 Sheila Cassidy. She was a plastic surgeon, but she gone out to Chile a year of her time free to the poor and she worked amongst the poor.
12:27 One day, a man was brought in with bullet wounds in his back and she extracted them. The next day, the secret police came, she was taken to their headquarters and brutally tortured.
12:45 She was given what they call electric shock treatment. In the prison, it was known as the barbeque. Because it was as if you were being barbequeed from the inside, the pain was terrible.
13:01 And yet in her book, she said, despite everybody, I felt the help, I felt help, from the prayers as that I receive from my friends and relatives back home supporting me like waves of love.
13:25 At the same time, a tape recording had been smuggled out of the Soviet Union from a labor camp a given to the editor of a Catholic newspaper.
13:38 It was a plea for prayers. There was no plea for them to make representation before the president of the Soviet Union.
13:48 They didn't plea for them to march and protest. It was just a plea for prayers. But for the power of prayer does not know the boundaries a space or time.
14:06 Perhaps at this point, could I ask you, and I try to remember myself every day, to pray for China, to pray for the church in China that is suffering so much at the moment.
14:24 Unfortunately, the so-called real polity in the Vatican as completely let them down. They sent a disgraced cardinal, cardinal. I will mention his name.
14:38 They sent a disgraced cardinal to China. Agreement was reached. Megabucks, lots of money was given to the Vatican in return for privileges, one of which was that many of the leading bishops who were married with children were members of the Communist Party.
15:08 The people had to register. They had to cow-tow to the communist government. That came before any allegiance to the Pope or to the teaching of the church.
15:18 They had been sold down the river Christ is suffering in China now in his people. Remember when St. Paul fell to the ground on the road to Damascus.
15:36 Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me? Christ our Lord is being persecuted now in the church, and he's been betrayed just as surely as Judas betrayed him 2000 years ago.
15:57 So please, please remember the church in China in your prayer every day. I was given quite out a begin with, would it be something?
16:23 I hoped it would be something like i edelol, a trabiata or ill-travitori, because I was a great Verdi fan. No, the opera was simply called Tarez, the composer was John Tavila, a very devout orthodox layman.
16:44 It was about Tareza of Lizia. 70, 100. When the curtains went by, you know, sort of a last sound of music, but with a little more gravitas.
17:16 But no, when the curtains went back, center stage was a bed. In the bed was sent to raise.
17:30 She was dying, and the opera showed how, as she was dying, she was nevertheless praying in with and through Christ, and it showed how her prayers went back into the past, into the future, supporting and helping soldiers in the first world war, and to the present to people who were suffering, or you may
17:55 remember, one particular person she prayed for was a man who'd been condemned to death, committed murder. She prayed that before he died, he would be converted.
18:07 …and they have us came into tell her, that just before he was died, …then he made the sign of the cross.
18:21 Now St. Teresa, St. Teresa of Leisier, was made the patron saint of the missions …to make the point that the contemplative orders are powerhouses, not just for themselves, from the desert father's onward.
18:40 It has always been made clear to somebody who goes into a contemplative order. They don't go just for themselves. They are going for the world.
18:52 They're going to pray to support others. Hermits were taught that when they go into their heritage, they must remember that their dwelling only has three walls.
19:06 The fourth wall must be open to the world that they have left, because it is for that world that they are praying in their solitude.
19:17 In England, in medieval times, when you believe it, this is absolutely true, local authorities would pray for a hermit, for the upkeep of a hermit or an anchorite, because they believed, well, they didn't believe, they knew that their powerful prayers were so important for the people in the parish, the
19:43 surrounding people and the people in the world. But seemingly, all this has been forgotten. I've been horrified in recent years to hear and has been done so seductively, so subtly, that few people are noticing But the regime in Rome at the moment has been continuously closing down.
20:14 Monasteries, contemplative monasteries, contemplative communities of nuns, or anyone who is committed to contemplative prayer, because they see it as a waste of time.
20:29 They see it as useless. ― ― and become apostles in the world they must become and they have this interesting little phrase that I've heard coined for many many years now they have got to practice what they call contemplation in action it is a meaningless phrase it is all but oxymoron and yet it has been
21:04 uration a afar and a afar again? In rather is a religious fantasy oh it is dangerous. Its being given by the spiritually bankrupt themselves, its ordinary tale, as the night are in a hierarchical place.
21:33 In certain way for those who non-sens, it is dangerous non-sens, because who is a mystic, but somebody who is first being prepared to go in the marketplace, or whatever you want to call it, through deep personal prayer to union with Christ, to contemplate the Father, to receive the fruits of contemplation
21:59 , so when they go into their metaphorical marketplace, lehethe, reth agusah blaohadh, aeithiag e bsehég elchu' i g穗hég, a nethanarars. Aeitha caw, a i tÙbl bŷen, aeitha, aeitha, eitha aeitha, Aeitha, aeitha, aeitha aeitha, aeitha, …to send somebody into the world into the marketplace empty on empty.
22:41 It is dangerous. It is dangerous. If they do not go into the world full of the love of God on empty, then it will not bizarre who converts the world, it will be the world that converts them to themselves.
23:08 And this is what we've seen for generations now as people have been religious particularly and priests relentlessly told or learn come to believe that they are mystics in the marketplace.
23:21 Contemplation in action, it is terribly, terribly dangerous. If somebody is possessed by a devil and the bishop is approached, he will choose a priest for that purpose who is a holy man and he must prepare with prayer and asceticism else when they try to exorcise a devil from somebody.
23:51 HBO 80zub istogen por od honon it means to pray out of, to pray the devil out of them, when they go to do that- and they are on empty- then the devil possesses them- this is why it is such a sea of th jou t h a e r t i a a h s c d d n s p m t e e t a y chi l i PoI nab'hea ndr i I d y i a a o I d d Wioost
24:14 siblings are yi oue. PiaII pliejimi Mail and Female have been going out to be mystics in this metaphorical marketplace.
24:28 And they are being possessed by the world converted by the world because they are weak and they are unempty. They've no inner-spiritual resistance.
24:39 This is the reason why we've experienced this terrible sexual abuse un mentioned by priests and religious on an industrial scale in the church, not only that but almost ten times the number of others who know what's going on, but keep quiet, keep it undercover, sweep it under the garbage, nobody must
25:03 know, cover up, cover up. The reason why this has happened is because love has been extricated from the family pretty hard,et what happens when you take out love report —from any family it employs to love other parents for each other, and then for the children.
25:23 And so it goes on and on for generation after generation. That is, what has been happening for generations within the church.
25:30 And that is why we are in this terrible moral delays at the moment. That's why we're putting our discourse not just for a prezel religios, but for us, for all of us, families, we must turn back to prayer.
25:45 Only God can help us. Only, only prayer can turn the tide because only God can do it through us and prayer is the word we use in order to invite God back into our lives so that we will operate, not on empty, but full of the love of God.
26:05 Because we are not here just to go out and transmit to other people a ideology, a Catholic moral teaching, a Catholic sociology or whatever, we are here to communicate the love of God and if that love of God is not in us we've got nothing to give to other people.
26:27 I want to end now by turning to the last word that I gave to the children and that was the word a, a not word a, was to remind them to review the day ahead.
26:45 In other words, the forthcoming day is going to be the place where we're going to try to put into practice the morning offering do have just made.
27:00 In order to try to live that day, not for ourselves, but for the honour and glory of God. Now, one of the problems of running a centre, yes, you have your office, your room, and you think wonderful, I mean, charge.
27:18 You suddenly realise you're in charge of an organisation that is ābrebl English Money Sagefialers Mere ea dgie2017 Azu e da사 bersol��고 JRmoney e ndha., Rapablite energenia Nhath hami Hen rare pull cos to dip € Bod Frans Grn ― ― ― ― ― ― …and one of the people that I did get in and regularly was the plumber
28:18 , because the drains were always going, particularly if the U-pipe was getting clogged up. Now, the plumber was a remarkable man, a most lovable character.
28:29 And his fees were absolutely reasonable, even if you called him in the middle of the night or on a Saturday or a Sunday.
28:37 Wayv, but still, I had to pay him. So, I decided on this plan. Next time he was having lunch, I went to the place where he'd left his tools.
28:57 I opened his toolbox to find what he used to get around the u-bend and I saw these words. rapure'h'… Inside the lid of its toolbox, ad Mā ear'em, De'ee l'oriam… all for the glory of God.
29:17 Here, this plumber, his day was given to God, all his work was given, not primary for himself or— even firstly for what he can make out of other people.
29:29 But to God— and to the glory of God lista Runner lou �odrigino ond dia because I found the tool fed Shane I bought it for myself Now When at the beginning of our day When you get up in the morning you are genuinely thinking have had all the jobs you�ve got to do you�ve got to do you�ve supplier und Wish
29:56 the way we would work …in the tires, all the bits of jobs of people you've got to be. You're thinking about this anyway.
30:07 Do your diary with God and say to yourself, this day I want to be given to the honor and glory of God, not to the honor of glory of myself.
30:19 Now, just a short time before when we got up, we were making our morning offering, cava dam Lana egeost bhaneine, dha, theoristان stranded tuta'a kiaMaa taab Symoat chochaft finarchela'amue fluapean hed ر feminismo ar off ho't collaborated t Mar señ onboard sem enf glow no, it is not to love our neighbor
31:03 as ourself, that's for the Old Testament, fine, but when Jesus came he gave us a New Commandment and he gave it at the last supper!
31:13 And remember, it's rather frightening. You must love your neighbor, not as yourself, but as I—as I love, a you? What a responsibility.
31:30 Now, we cannot, of course, exercise that responsibility unless we are so open to him that we have received him into us through our prayer that he can work in and through us.
31:48 Now, in the very early days of the church, when they were preparing for baptism, 2-years remember in a preparation of prayer.
31:57 In that preparation of prayer came the praying to look after the needy, those who were sick, those who needed clothes, those who needed money, those who just needed company, and deacons were originally created to oversee this work.
32:16 That was their job because it was so important. When you do it to the least of my brethren, then you do it to me!" They were so aware of this commandment, when you do it to the least of my brethren, then you do it to me!
32:42 They had read often enough the chapter in Matthew II V of the last judgement de regio General, y leagoa Bar Te tre, poundhullune in nah, ll tre trehe, sowe bold' これで tiéemame.
33:33 Noo. Be aaa, a raf a quina a lanc A Strater. A raf A quina, A ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ―A story as told, and it is apparently a true story, was a Roman soldier.
34:07 ―And when he was riding home in a very cold, freezing winter light, he came across a man who was all but naked and starving.
34:19 He immediately stopped, gave him arms, and then took out his sword, cut his cloak in half and gave one half to the man who had hardly any clothing who was freezing to death.
34:37 As he turned away on his way, he saw that the man was Christ. The soldier's name was Martin and he became the Bishop of tour.
34:58 Now, that story was so important in those early days to underline and highlight this important truth whenever you do it to the least of my brethren, then you do it to me, son перв guerra Carik em with him, Three kill He was already near where he … Cap jordiðna á un Though they cut her round to even when
35:52 they walked into battle wfendchuckling them of this truth, you must love others try each love others as Christina loves us Towards the very end of her life to noviosusboat St.
36:10 Francis Wisella when s hæ het dis And what other clamp api ? Fraos Aut diamonds can you can you can you tell us how we will know when our prayer is is being is successful?
36:27 St. Francis said yes by the love that you have for one another. And then the second novice step forward and he said but father can Can you tell us how we will know when we have attained perfect prayer?
36:52 Yes, it's in Francis, by the love you have for your enemies. Well, that brings us all down to size. By the love you have for your enemies, remember Christ now, where His hands were being hammard to the cross, father, forgive them, but they know not what they do.
37:22 St. Jerome, who translated the whole of the Bible into Latin for us, into what came to be called the vulgar, said that, at the end of his life, St.
37:34 John the Evangelist was carried around from one Christian community to another, one Christian eucharistic community to another. On a stretcher, and all he said was love one another, love one another.
37:57 Let me end by once again paraphrasing those words of saint ― ― ― ― ― ― She alone is the only way to love your neighbor as Christ loves you.
38:19 That is only one way to love your enemies and that is to pray. If anybody points in another direction, then they are misleading you.
38:35 Believe me, believe me, they are. aren't they?